Thursday, 30 March 2017

The Early Novels Database (END) is hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Rare Book and Manuscript Library (PU), and under development by staff and students at the library, Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania. The project has a stated aim of restoring metadata lost in digitisation projects. If this were actually the case then the six-year old project would have to be considered a failure, even in its "Under Construction" form. It is clear, however, that the actual aim of END is to involve undergraduate students in the collection of detailed paratextual information, annotation, marginalia etc. from the "extensive collection of fiction in English published between 1660 and 1830" available at PU. (A 2011 overview of the project is here.)

I am not sure how I have managed to not hear about the project, given that I am interested in annotation, marginalia etc., particularly that in works by Haywood. But once I did hear about it I realised that it was very likely that END included information about works by Haywood, since PU has a large number of books by Haywood. (With 45 items, it has the fifth largest Haywood collection in the States: larger than that at Yale, Princeton, the Clark.) Unfortunately, it is presently impossible to search END for works by Haywood. On the splash page, a visitor is given the choice of sorting results by title or year (not author), or to "narrow results" by browsing "Narrative form," "Author claim type," "Author gender claim" (by which they seem to mean "Author sex claim"), "Person" etc. Since there was no way to narrow results by author, I did what I have had to do so many times, I simply searched through every single title to identify those by Haywood. It is a tedious way of searching, and would have been largely unnecessary if the metadata in the PU library catalogue had been carried over, but it is effective. Below is the list of titles, arranged chronologically.

There appear to be many cases where there are multiple entries for the one work, and there are three records that are empty—links that lead to a blank page (marked † above). Also, only five of the fourteen entries record marginalia or inscriptions (marked * above) of any kind, and most of these provide few useful details. In almost all cases Haywood listed as a “Person” in the primary record, but no linking is provided to her as a Person. The only case where you can navigate from one Haywood work to another is Secret histories, novels, and poems (1745) which links to The female spectator (1771).

Since I examined all of these books late in July 1997, I am not relying on END for my knowledge of the PU colection. But there are a lot of smaller libraries that I did not visit and it would be helpful if projects like this were more common. Involving undergraduates in cataloguing weird and interesting copy-specific information is a great idea. It is a shame that the basic database structure is not better adapted to searching by author since the vast majority of interest in marginalia is focussed on the annotator (as author) or on the annotations (as a response to an author): i.e., it is ultimately a biographical interest.

The only blog entry (on the END blog) concerning marginalia is this one from 2013. In her reflections on Marginalia, Christina Aruffo explains why "marginalia cataloguing can be sporadic"—even in a project such as this—because cataloguing it can be time consuming, cataloguers have their own "accepted and internalized definition of what marginalia actually is"—meaning doodles and library markings ("library marginalia") get less attention than text, as does anything else that cannot be easily related to the text as text.

For student projects based on END data and texts, see here; for papers, see this (including one by Andrew Piper and Ehsan Arabnejad which "draws on a taxonomy of eighteenth-century novels’ footnotes to advance a simple but consequential argument: despite the claims of almost all scholarship on the subject, footnotes in novels were common and referential rather than exceptional and self-referential, meta-fictional, or “postmodern” avant la letter." Nice.)

A linguist made an observation to me last year concerning media focus, which has been at the back of my mind of late. Responding to a student project on media focus and bias, they wondered whether another way of measuring media bias might be to count how often different media outlets use the phrase "far right" versus "far left"—since these are, at least in part, terms of abuse: ways of labeling political views or actions as extreme.

The linguist reasoned that, if there is a fairly-even distribution of votes for centre-left and centre-right parties, there are probably as many far-left as far-right voters too. And if the left is just as active as the right, you would expect an unbiased media to label as many ideas or actions as far or extreme left as right.

It did occur to me at the time that, if "far left" activists spend their weekends knitting, while "far right" activists are burning down refugee centres, the media would have good reasons to refer to "far right" more than "far left". Or, reporters might fill newpapers with glowing reports about "far right" fascists and attacks on "far laft" Marxists, so the number of references might be equal but a bias still be present.

Still, as I said, the question got me thinking. There did seem to be a lot more discussion of the "far right" than "far left" in the media. So, when an acquaintance decried the right-wing drift of the ABC, I started thinking about this "test" again. And every time since, when I have read an accusation of left-wing bias at the ABC, I have thought that I should have a go at this test and see what the results are.

Since I'd really rather think about something else, and it was obvious that the only way I could stop thinking about this was to take to Google to do a series of site-searches, I decided to do this, post the results here, and return to my Haywood research. I looked at all the major local newspapers and a few famous US papers for comparison. I have sorted them according to how many more times the site refers to "far right" than "far left" (the multiple).

As you can see, on this measure: The Daily Mail is, improbably, the least biased of all media outlets in its labeling of political ideas or actions as "far" (50:50 split in references to "far left" and "far right" on its site [multiple equals one]). Brietbart—the only site to refer to "far left" more than "far right"—is about as focussed on left-wing extremism as The Australian is on the right-wing extremism (!?!; with three times as many references to either "far left" or "far right" [the multiples being one-third and three]).

The Age is obsessively-focussed on right-wing extremism (with six times as many references to "far right" as "far left" [multiple of six]), while the SBS is almost twice as obsessed as the obsessively-focussed Age (making them "madly-" or "insanely-focussed"? [multiple of eleven]). The ABC is so far beyond "insanely-focussed" on the right, by this measure, that superlatives fail me: a multiple of seventeen! I.e., seventeen times as many references to "far right" as "far left"—94 percent of all reference to "far-[anything]" being "far right." The numbers are amazing too: the ABC has a few more references to "far left" than The Australian, but more than six times as many references to the "far right"!

Obviously, there are lots of problems with this as a measure of focus, and even more with translating focus to bias in labeling people, ideas, actions etc. as extreme: it may be that all forty-thousand ABC references to the "far right" are objectively-speaking, unbiased and even-handed, with no suggestion that the "far right" are extreme in any way. It may be that, every other news outlet is massively under-reporting "far right" activity. And, as I said, it is unclear whether this is actually right-wing bias: with innumerable glowing reports about fascists mixed with a small number of attacks on Marxists (or even an uneven number of references to people sitting in the "far left" of pubs, clubs and stadiums).

However, if Brietbart is itself usually described as a "far right" media outlet—because of its obsession with, and attacks on, what it calls the "far left"—that does suggest that The Australian is "far left," since its references to extreme left and right activity are the statistical mirror-image of Brietbart. And this suggests that the ABC would have to be described as far-far-far-far-far left (i.e., more than five times as far "far left" as Brietbart is "far right"?). It seems unlikely that the ABC is five times as biased as Brietbart, but the fact that the ABC has almost three times as many references to "far right" as Brietbart has references to "far left" does suggests—at the least—something about the usage of these terms.

A general Google search does bring up twice as many references to "far right" as "far left" so, perhaps, the Daily Telegraph is closer to the centre than the Daily Mail, SBS is only as biased as Brietbart (the former have six times more references to the "far right" than the internet average, the later roughly one sixth), and the ABC is only eight or nine times as focussed on the "far right" as the rest of the world combined (as represented on the internet), or only 1.5 times as far to the left of the internet-average as Brietbart is to the right. Perhaps.

Anyway, as should be clear, linguistics and media/communications are not really my forte. I couldn't work out how to get Excel to establish a multiple based on the internet average of 2:1 for far right:left. And I haven't done enough maths to confidently discuss any of the above in relation to standard deviation, which I suspect I should. But I have pretty-much satisfied my own curiosity, so I am quite happy to let the subject go.

Saturday, 25 March 2017

[I have moved this on section of my Eliza Haywood Links here, since my 2009 post was becoming unweildy. I hadn't updated it for years (since 2012?), and I don't plan on updating it again any time soon. Now that so much formal criticism is readily available online, there is less need for it. And since this type of ephemeral and informal discussion is very prone to dissapearing from online, it is a constant battle maintain the links—time better spent keeping up with the primary and secondary texts.]

August 2011: Students at The University of Illinois doing Engl 429: The Eighteenth Century Novel posted their thoughts on Fantomina in a series of posts, mostly here and here.

February–April 2012: Students at The University of Colorado at Boulder doing ENGL 1260-002: Intro to Women's Lit: Adventures in Form posted their thoughts on Fantomina in a series of posts, mostly here and here.

Thursday, 23 March 2017

In 2004, in the literature-survey section of my Bibliography of Eliza Haywood, I explained that

no public or private library has approached completeness in gathering together the works of Haywood. Indeed, it appears as if no library has ever made the attempt. The best Haywood collections are those held by the largest academic and public libraries, which have such collections by virtue of the fact that they have a lot of books. Consequently, no auction or library catalogue has offered a useful substitute for a Haywood bibliography or offered substantial assistance in compiling this bibliography. Also, there have been no substantial exhibitions of Haywood’s works and no substantial collections offered by booksellers and hence no accompanying catalogues to draw upon.

I am very pleased to say that this situation has changed. In a footnote to this passage I acknowledged that "Sandy Lerner has collected nineteen Haywood items since 1990 as a part of a larger project at Chawton House to promote research into the writings of English women before 1830." Though their collection is small (it just scrapes into the top thirty collections, in a tie with New York Public Library at no.29/30), the context is important. Chawton House is a collection with a purpose. Chawton House has made an attempt to collect Haywood and other women writers like her. And Chawton House does not have a collection of her books only "by virtue of the fact that they have a lot of books." It is appropriate then, that Chawton House will be the location of the first Haywood exhibition (details here), and it is a huge achievement that the collection has so quickly reached the point where they are able to host an exhibition of Haywood's works at all.

Though not credited online, the exhibition ("Naming, Shaming, Reclaiming: The ‘Incomparable’ Eliza Haywood") has been curated by Dr Kim Simpson, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chawton House Library. If you read her bio (here), you will see that Kim is interested in the contribution made to the development of fiction by anonymous and unattributed texts—texts which are rarely taught, edited or discussed by an author-obsessed academy. Given my own focus on Haywood, I must plead guilty to contributing to this unhealthy, anachronistic obsesson with authors—and I must admit to regularly having to do battle the urge to suggest any new, plausible attributions—but in my defence I would point out that I kept these unhealth urges in check and dismissed more attributions (45) than I added (2). And one that I dismissed (Ca.36 The Prude) is Kim's "particular favourite for its libertine villainess, Elisinda."

The exhibition is open for more than two months. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it, so I hope that lots of people post pictures and descriptions online and that a catalogue of some sort is printed—since that too would be a first!

Thursday, 16 March 2017

The Van Everen Cover is the right Book Cover.
It's modern, it's useful, it's neat;
So it's no use to bother or try any other,
For Van Everen's cannot be beat.

When I received my copy of his Nineteenth-Century Dust-Jackets, I was glad to see that Mark Goldburn includes a description (on 92–93) of various American "stationers' jackets" that were being sold in the 1870s. Two years ago, I had to go to great lengths to buy the below, unused Van Everen Adjustable Book Cover, and was only able to do so thanks to the kind assistance of David Levy (Hoyle bibliographer/collector and the genius behind this blog). Mark describes these "Fitsanybook" jackets, but does not offer any images—which is a shame, but even in a heavily-illustrated book there are limits to how many illustrations you can include. Since there is not much online about them, I thought it might be worth posting something here.

Van Everen advertised their "Neat and Convenient Ready made Book Cover" from 1872–1894 in terms as follows:

P. F. Van Everen's Adjustable Book Cover, consists of a loose or supplementary cover, made of strong manilla paper, in four parts [as above], said parts being self-sealing, and adjustable in relation to each other, as they are put on the book, so as to fit many different sizes of books. The object of this invention is to supply libraries, schools, and book users generally, with a cheap, convenient and neat book cover, already cut, folded, gummed, and in part sealed—thus affording, at a trifling cost, a complete book cover, that fits any book. These covers are extensively used by schools and Sunday-school libraries. Samples sent free to any address upon receipt of six cents for postage, by P. F. Van Everen, care of N. Y. Silicate Book Slate Co., 191 Fulton street, corner Church, N. Y.

This advertising spiel ran in The Weekly Trade Circular on 29 February 1872, and was repeated with minor variations in The Publishers' Weekly and Library Notes from 1872–1893. This advertisement explains that Van Everen's Adjustable Book Cover was patented 3 May 1870 (American Bookseller, vol.1, no.6 (15 March 1876): 221) and in 1876 Van Everen explained that his "Book-Covers have been in use for six years," dating the sale of the covers to the same year as they were patented (Minutes of the Illinois Baptist Pastoral Union, Thirty-First Annual Meeting ... Chicago, October 17–20, 1876 (Aurora, IL: Knickerbocker and Hodder, 1876), [8]).

In 1873, the "Trade Price" for these "Fitsanybook" covers—with a dealer's imprint added to them (see example below presently available on eBay here)—ranged from twenty dollars for one thousand down to fifteen dollars per thousand for five thousand or more (The Publishers' Weekly, no.87 (13 September 1873): 288). A few years later the American Educational Annual, vol. 1 (New York: J. W. Schermerhorn, 1875), listed the covers at two dollars per box of one hundred.

From 1876, Van Everen was advertsing his Adjustable Book-Covers (NB: plural), in three sizes: A (as above; "School and Sunday-School books," 18mo, 16mo and 12mo; $2.00 per 100)—which seems to be the original size—plus two new sizes: B ("Elementary and Primary Geographies, Law and Medical books"; seemingly, 8vo; $3.50 per 100) and C ("large Atlas Geographies"; seemingly, folio; $5.00 per 100) (Minutes of the Illinois Baptist Pastoral Union, [8]), adding that his covers "are the only supplementary covers that can be successfully and economically applied to different sizes of books and Sunday School Library books." In 1878, an even smaller size was introduced: the "Primary," for "the smallest Sunday School Library books" ($1.50 per 100) (Steiger's Educational Directory for 1878 (New York: E. Steiger, 1878), 221).

On 14 February 1888, Van Everen patented a new and more elaborate design for the "Fitsanybook" ("The Adjustable Book Cover: Just the Thing for Schools and Libraries"), and on 15 August 1890, Van Everen sent a very long "letter and accompanying documents to The Stationer" (see below), which advertises the covers in "three colors of papers" (regular manilla, a dark colour, and a cover that is "lithographed in fancy figures") plus a "leatherette" finish. But the days of the Fitsanybook cover appear to have been numbered; the last reference that I can find to it is in the Proceedings of the Americal Library Association, 17–22 September 1894, in a list of "'Don't'; Warnings of Experience. Communicated by a number of librarians": "Don't invest in the Van Everen Fitsanybook adjustable book-covers called 'Fitsanybook.' There is more tear than wear in them."

* * * * *

Van Everen must have sold hundreds of thousands of these book covers (below they claim "about a million"), so it is not too hard to find books which have intact jackets. Above, for example, is one presently available on eBay (here), with an intact library label for the "Library of the E.C. Fraternity. This appears to be the regular manilla Fitsanybook design. The one below with a private library label, and the 1888 patent date on it, seems to be the lithographed version with "fancy figures." Images from the inside of my own set of covers (also lithographed) are further below, for comparison. There is another one with this design presently available on eBay (here).

* * * * *

Advertisement in The American Stationer, vol.1, no.6 (20 August 1890): 389:

P. F. Van Everen, Manufacturer of Adjustable Book Covers and Perforated Library Numbers, sends the following letter and "accompanying documents" to The Stationer:
60 Ann Street, New York, August 15, 1890. To the Editor of The Stationer:
We have advertised considerably in The Stationer and with such uniform good results that we would like once more to stir up the Trade by way of remembrance, but just how to do that in a fresh, new way is hard to plan and harder to work the plan.
We have been making book covers for many years; so long, in fact, that the profits on their manufacture and sale have made some persons independent of the ordinary vicissitudes of commercial life, and it is well understood that we make the best book cover that was ever placed on the market. It has had the largest sale of any stationery novelty, and we mean to keep making them as long as it pays—the manufacturer.
What we would like to have you do for us is this: Fix up an advertisement so that we can get the attention of the new firms who have recently started in to make their fortunes by dealing in books and stationery. The old-established dealers know all about us now, but we would like to have every dealer who has not used the Van Everen book covers know that they are commercially convenient, useful, ornamental and popular. We use three colors of papers for our covers—the regular manilla color, a dark color that wears well and does not show soiling so soon as the others, and a cover that is lithographed in fancy figures.
We also make some covers of leather paper (leatherette), for use in very choice localities or hi-calities. Of those we make the size A only, and they retail for 5 cents each. That may seem pretty precipitous, but people will have them. A cover of that kind is dreadfully durable and in the dark colors keeps quite clean till used up. The "leather" covers are put up fifty in a box—quite a nice box, too—and are sold to the dealers for $1.25 per box.
We meant to have asked you to put in the advertisement that we make more library numbers and letters now than we ever did before, but you cannot devote a whole column to Yours truly,
P. F. VAN EVEREN.

———————————

It is a noticeable fact that the sales of the Van Everen book covers are increasing yearly, and that not only the schools but the libraries are using them in quantities.

* * * *

The old-fashioned cover was a good enough cover
When paper and time were so free,
But as 'tis fussy and old and cannot be sold,
It's not the Book Cover for me.

The Van Everen Cover is the right Book Cover.
It's modern, it's useful, it's neat;
So it's no use to bother or try any other,
For Van Everen's cannot be beat.

* * * *

By the way, most of the booksellers that sell school books find that it is a good plan to furnish book covers with every school book that they sell. The dealer has a neat card advertising his business printed on the outside of the front part of the cover, and gives a cover to every buyer of a book. The printing only costs about 50 cents per thousand.

* * * *

These cards are printed on at the time and place of manufacture, as a usual thing, but as many of the dealers are having constant calls for covers that are without the advertisement they buy the covers unprinted to meet that demand, and on those that are for the give-away trade they stamp what advertising matter they want with a rubber stamp.

* * * *

Little Sallie Waters, sitting in the sun,
With a beau 'n umbrella, having lots of fun.
Rise, Sallie, rise, 'tis time to be wise,
Look through the East and look through the West,
Van Everen's book covers are the best.

* * * *

They may be the best, or they may not be the best; it is the way they suit your needs. We do not wish to make such extravagant statements about the book covers that the dealers will think that the goods will sell themselves. We do not wish to force sales. All that we wish to do is to let the dealers know what the book covers are and where they may be had. Then when they want them it is easy to make a sale.

* * * *

There was a man in our town,
Who was so wondrous wise.
He made a patent book cover,
To fit books of any size,
And when he saw how well they sold,
Said he: "It is quite plain,
I'll make them by the million
And I get there just the same."

* * * *

We were asked, the other day, how many new school books were put into the hands of the rising generation every year, and we had to answer that we didn't know. But we might have made a guess at it, for about a million of them are covered with adjustable book covers, and if we estimate that only one out of every ten school books is covered at all we get a total of ten millions. Well, who would not belong to a Great Book Company if he could?

———————————

Answers to Correspondents.

B., Keokuk, Ia., wants to know if the Van Everen adjustable book covers are sold at wholesale in Chicago.Ans.— Certainly. A. C. McClurg [and] Co., S. A. Maxwell & Co., The Western News Company, and C. M. Barnes keep them in stock constantly.
R., St. Joseph, Mo., asks who sells the Van Everen adjustable covers in St. Louis.Ans.—They are principally sold by The J. L. Boland Book and Stationery Company.
Librarian, Springfield, Ill., writes: "Where can we get gummed, numbered tags ready made?"Ans.—From Van Everen, 60 Ann street, New York. Order direct.
S. A. M., Milwaukee, Wis., wants address of the manufacturer of carriage checks in duplicate; also hat checks, etc.Ans.—P. F. Van Everen, 60 Ann street, New York. There seems to be quite a sameness about these answers, but we cannot pervert the facts even for the sake of variety.
To answer about a dozen letters in a lump, we may as well add that the Van Everen book covers, as well as his general specialties, are not only for sale as above, but also by the following wholesale dealers: J. K. Gill [and] Co., Portland, Ore.; Cunningham, Curtiss & Welch, San Francisco, Cal.; The Chain [and] Hardy Book, Stationery and Art Company, of Denver, Col.; The Burrows Bros. Company, Cleveland, Ohio; Brown, Eager & Hull, Toledo, Ohio; Vosburgh, Whiting [and] Co., Buffalo. N. Y.; J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, Pa., and by all the large book and stationery jobbers of New York city.

———————————

For particulars as to the sizes and the prices to the booksellers, see the full page advertisement on the other side of this sheet. P. F. VAN EVEREN, 60 Ann Street, New York.

Sunday, 5 March 2017

While Paul Watt and I were working on our four-volume collection Bawdy Songbooks of the Romantic Period (2011), with Derek B. Scott, David Gregory and Ed Cray, we discussed the possibility of continuing our collaboration, and directing scholarly attention to the songsters that were at the heart of the collection, by holding a conference and/or editing a collection of essays. In the end (i.e., over the last six years), we did/have done both.

Although our book, edited by Derek, Paul and I for Cambridge University Press, is not officially in print until 23 March, it has appeared on Google Books here, today, so I thought I'd use this excuse to post the very cool cover art and thank my brilliant co-editors for making this collection possible.

I also wanted to repeat something I have had reason to say many times before (such as here), Government bodies (I am looking at you ARC), and Universities, are obsessed with "Evidence of Impact." I can trace the prompt for two collaborative enterprises, an essay ("Fanny Hill, Lord Fanny, and the Myth of Metonymy") and an edited collection (Bawdy Songbooks of the Romantic Period), both of which were published in 2011, to August 2000. And I can trace the prompt for the present collaborative enterprise to those 2011 publications. The second time-frame is shorter (six years instead of ten), which I can probably credit to Paul and Derek, but they are still long. Likewise, the time-frame for other scholars using our publications is almost as long and so, only now, are citations for these publications beginning to accumulate and multiply.

In November 2010 I wrote:

When it can take a decade … between the prompt for an article and its publication, and when it can take three years between the submission of an article and it being printed, there seems little chance that an ARC final report, submitted on the day your funding stops, will capture even a fraction of your "Research outputs" and, as for "Evidence of Impact," it could be years again before any of the arguments [you] have presented gain any traction.

While we wait for "evidence of impact" to accumulate for today's publication, we will each keep ourselves busy with our next projects. Meanwhile, here is the cool cover art I mentioned:

BTW: The first title for our book was The Nineteenth-Century Songster: A Cultural History; our second A Cultural History of the Songster: Cheap Print and Popular Song in the Nineteenth Century, but we got rolled. CUP didn't want "Songster" in the main title at all, and I note that the sub-title is missing from the "About this book" page on Google (here). As you may have guessed, I didn't agree with CUP's arguments for changing the title, and that is why I am using the sub-title here!

Saturday, 4 March 2017

Henry Spencer Ashbee (1834–1900) (aka Pisanus Fraxi) claims, in his Catena Librorum Tacendorum (1885), 83, that "Few works have been more frequently illustrated than the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure." He goes on to describe five mezzotints, "designed probably by George Morland, and engraved by his brother-in-law, William Ward, or by John Raphael Smith" (ibid.). (The whole of this book is available on the Internet Archive here.)

Ashbee cites La Bibliophile Fantaisiste (Geneva, 1869), 48, for the five plates he discusses, "with eight others." This information was repeated, in turn, by Iwan Bloch (aka Eugen Duehren; 1872–1922), who translated it into German in his Das Geschlechtsleben in England, mit besonderer Beziehung auf London, 3 Teile in 3 Bänden (Berlin, 1901-3) [Sex life in England, with special reference to London, 3 parts in 3 volumes]. This work was revised and shortened as Englische Sittengeschichte, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1912) [The history of English customs].

Bloch's earlier, longer work was twice translated (much abridged): first in America by Richard Deniston as Ethnological and cultural studies of the sex life in England: illustrated, as revealed in its erotic and obscene literature and art; with nine private cabinets of illustrations by the greatest English masters of erotic art, Translated and Edited by Richard Deniston (New York: Falstaff Press, 1934) and second in England by William H. Forstern as Sexual Life in England: Past and Present (London: Alfred Aldor, 1938; repr. London: Arco Publications, in association with the Rodney Book Service, 1958). The whole of Ethnological and cultural studies of the sex life in England is on the Internet Archive here; but Sexual Life in England: Past and Present is not online.

Given how horribly complicated it is trying to unravel the relationship between the above books, I thought it might be worth using the passage concerning the mezzotints by Morland (1763-1804) in Das Geschlechtsleben in England (vol.2 of which is online here) to show the differences between the three texts. I have put the British translation first, since it sticks closer to the German.

The Bloch passage is Das Geschlechtsleben in England, mit besonderer Beziehung auf London, 2.296–97; translated as Sexual Life in England: Past and Present (1958), 650; Ethnological and cultural studies of the sex life in England, 350–51:

Forstern [the bracketed bits below are the bits of the German text omitted from his translation]

George Morland, in association with Ward and J. R. Smith, also supplied illustratons to obscene books. The following five excellent mezzotintos were for "Memoir of a Woman of Pleasure"

1. Fanny Hill and Phoebe. Phoebe touching Fanny in an indecent manner. [To the right, a table with a burning candle.]
2. Mrs. Brown, the Horse Grenadier, and Fanny Hill. Fanny watching through a glass door a love scene between the stout Mrs. Brown and a soldier.
3. Fanny Hill, Louisa, and the Nosegay Boy. Youth and two prostitutes. Basket of flowers and rod.
4. Harriet ravish'd in the Summerhouse. [Harriet is raped in the summer cottage]
[4a. The same scene without title, with slight differences in the hair and clothes of the woman, and the equipment in the room etc. This is probably the older drawing, and no. 4 a later copy.]
5. Harriet and the Barronet (sic). A couple on a setee, with two other watching them.
[5a. The same scene with slight changes. Sopha, hair colour and style are different. On the right is an arm-chair, on the left in the foreground men's boots and boots.]

Deniston

Morland also illustrated the real erotic works. His best known are the five superb mezzotints to John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure:

No. 1. Fanny Hill and Phoebe. Phoebe is initiating Fanny into tribadic practices.
[No.2] and Fanny Hill. Fanny secretly observes the fat Mrs. Brown being engaged by a lusty soldier.
No. 3. Fanny Hill, Louisa, and the Nosegay Boy. The youth is engaged with the two prostitutes. In the foreground a basket with flowers. At the right, a rod on a stool.
No. 4. Harriet ravish'd in the Summer House. A powerful drawing of a forcible rape.
No. 5. Harriet and the Barronet (sic). A couple engaged on the ottoman, while two other couples stand behind and watch them.

As you can see above, both Forstern and Deniston shorten Bloch's text, thought they do it is slightlly different ways. Both omit any mention of the "table with a burning candle" in no.1; but sometimes Fortern includes more detail (explaining, in no.2, that Fanny is "watching through a glass door") and somethimes Deniston includes more (describing no. 4 as "A powerful drawing of a forcible rape"). In general, Deniston is more informal ("the stout Mrs. Brown and a soldier" vs "the fat Mrs. Brown being engaged by a lusty soldier"), and is inclined to explain more ("Phoebe touching Fanny in an indecent manner" vs "Phoebe is initiating Fanny into tribadic practices"). What this means is that neither Forstern nor Deniston can be relied on.

* * * * *

The five Mezzotints described by Ashbee and Bloch are below. Where I could find both coloured and uncoloured versions, I include both.

BTW: if you'd like to buy a set of these engravings, be prepared to pay a lot! See here for a set which sold for Euro 15,600 in 2006.

Thursday, 2 March 2017

I spent the second half of 2013 on study leave. During that time I compiled two lengthy articles of Thomas Gardner, his wife and son, who carried on his publishing business after he died in 1765. Both articles were published in Script and Print in the first half of 2015. (They were going to appear together, but at over eighty pages of print, were too long for a single, sixty-four-page issue.) I think of them as Gardner 1 and Gardner 2 or "Bio" and "Checklist," but the titles are:

These article started with material I was going to publish in a blog post here. But, as the material rapidly grew, I realised it would have to be a few posts, then an article, then two articles! Long as my articles are, quite a bit of the material I collected during my research was never going to make it into them. But I tried to hold off posting anything here until my articles were in print (emphasis on tried: one moment of weakness, quickly led to another).

And while drafting a few others I recently identified an error in the printing of the ornament catalogue. Because I was still researching and drafting essays, I had still been kind-of holding off posting anything more here. However, now that my main articles are in print, and I have an error to correct, there really doesn't seem to be any good reason to hold off publishing anything more about Gardner here, and at least one good reason to not hold off. So I won't.

The printing error in Gardner 2 is that the image of one headpiece (H16) is repeated (it appears as both H16 and H18), while a second headpiece image (of H18) is omitted. This is the image of H18 that ought to have appeared in Gardner 2:

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Below is a bibliography of the books, pamphlets etc. that contain Thomas Gardner ornaments (i.e., the forty-nine ornaments I identified as belonging to him), but which I did not include in my "Checklist" Bibliography (Part A [only containing Gardner ornaments] or B [containing a mix of ornaments]). Although the lists below may contain items I accidentally omitted from my article, they are not lists of errata and corrigenda. Rather, they are supplement to my "Checklist"—since they are/will be mostly made up of items that [a] I did not locate using the method I outlined in my "Checklist" or [b] which were intentionally left out of my "Checklist," such as the dozens of items not available on ECCO or in digital surrogate elsewhere.

It is possible that the bibliography below, combined with the "selection of Gardner’s output" I included in my "Checklist," may, in time, amount to a near-complete list of items printed by Gardner. I certainly hope it does, and so I will be very grateful for any information provided to expand the lists below. I have started today with only the two items identified by Carlo Dumontet, which he reported to me almost immediately after my "Checklist" was published, and one by David Levy, which he sent me last week. (A big thank you to Carlo and David.) I will add the Haywood and Shakespeare items I identified in Gardner 3, as soon as I get a chance.

Given the progress Hazel Wilkinson has now made in "developing methods of identifying unknown printers using digital imaging" (i.e., using image-recognition software to locate and match printer’s ornaments on ECCO files), there is a new and enticing method for identifying extra Gardner items: Fleuron: A Database of Eighteenth-Century Printers' Ornaments. David found his addition to this list using Fleuron. My first attempts on this site suggest that there is very good chance that I will soon be able to greatly-expand these lists. If so, great! It may not take decades—which is normal for such enterprises—to reach the point where it is possible to obtain a much more complete picture of the scope of Gardner’s printing activities.

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A: List of eleven items containing only Gardner ornaments (NB: new items will be numbered sequentially, A1, A2 etc., but will be arranged chronologically).

A11. [Elizabeth Cooper], The Historical and Poetical Medley: Or Muses Library; being a choice and faithful collection of the best antient English poetry, from the times of Edward the Confessor, to the reign of King James the First. With The Lives and Characters of the known Writers taken from the most Authentick Memoirs. Being The most valuable Collection of the Kind now extant, affording Entertainment upon all Subjects whatsoever (London: Printed for T. Davies, in Duke’s Court over-against St. Martin’s Church, in St. Martin’s Lane, 1738); ESTC: T61451; available on GB here. Ornaments: [i] (T13). ¶ The Gardner ornament appears on the title-page (only) of what is the third issue of a book that was issued four times. It is possible that Gardner printed this title-leaf only and had no role in printing either the book itself, or any of the other title-leaves. The other issues are: [i] The Muses Library; or a series of English poetry, from the Saxons, to the reign of King Charles II. Containing, the lives and characters of all the known writers in that Interval, the Names of their Patrons; Complete Episodes, by way of Specimen of the larger Pieces, very near the intire Works of some, and large Quotations from others. Being a general collection of almost all the old valuable poetry extant, now so industriously enquir’d after, tho’ rarely to be found, but in the Studies of the Curious, and affording Entertainment on all Subjects, Philosophical, Historical, Moral, Satyrical, Allegorical, Critical, Heroick, Pastoral, Gallant, Amorous, Courtly, and Sublime, by Langland, Gower, Chaucer, Lidgate, Occleve, Harding, Barclay, Fabian, Skelton, Howard Earl of Surrey, Sir T. Wyat, Dr. Bourd, Sackville Earl of Dorset, Churchyard, Higgens, Warner, Gascoign, Turberville, Nash, Sir Philip Sidney, Grevill L. Brook, Spencer, Sir John Harrington, Chalkhill, Fairfax, Sir John Davis, Sir W. Raleigh, Sir Edw. Dyer, Daniel, etc. Vol.1. (London: Printed for J. Wilcox in the Strand; T. Green at Charing-Cross; J. Brindley in New-Bond-Street; and T. Osborn in Gray’s-Inn, 1737); ESTC: T144867; reissued [ii] as The Muses Library; or, a series of English poetry, … The second edition. Vol. 1. (London: Printed for T. Davies, [1737]); ESTC: N69586; reissued [iv] as The Muses Library; or, a series of English poetry… (London: Printed for James Hodges, at the Looking-Glass, overagainst St. Magnus Church, London-Bridge, 1741); ESTC: T144866 .

A4. Catherine Douglas, Duchess of Queensberry, A Proper Reply to a Late Very Extraordinary Letter from the Hon. T----s H----y, Esq; to Sir Thomas Hanmer, Bart. (London: Printed for W. Webb, near St. Paul’s, 1742); ESTC: T53983; available on GB here. Ornaments: [1] (T10), [3] (H06).

A7. John Cookesey, Christianity founded on argument. A sermon Preached before the University of Oxford, on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1743 (London: printed for William Sandby, at the Ship without Temple-Bar, 1743); ESTC: T30688 ; available on GB here. Ornaments: 1 (H06, F05), 23 (T01).

A2. Edward Vernon, Authentic papers relating to the expedition against Carthagena (London: Printed for L. Raymond, and sold by J. M. in Pater-noster-Row, 1744); ESTC: T22782 ; available on GB here; reissued as Authentic papers relating to the expedition against Carthagena, 2nd ed. (London: Printed for L. Raymond, and sold by M. Cooper at the Globe in Pater-noster-row, 1744); ESTC: T22783. Ornaments: 100 (T06).

A8. The Edge taken off: Or The Conundrums and Home-Clinches Of The Whet-Stone Unriddled. To which are added, Some Fresh Conundrums, and their Answers (London: Printed for J. Robinson, at the Golden-Lyon in Ludgate-Street, 1745); ESTC: T75787; L copy (incomplete) available on GB here. Ornaments: [1] (T12), [8] (H12, inverted), [1] (H09).

A9. The whet-Stone: or the spawn of puzzle. Being a fresh collection of conundrums, never before publish’d (London: Printed for J. Robinson, at the Golden-Lyon in Ludgate-Street, 1745); ESTC: T75838; L copy (incomplete) available on GB here. Ornaments: [1] (T12), [1] (H09).

A10. An Earnest Address to Britons. Wherein the Several Artifices Made Use of by the Emissaries of France and Rome, to Corrupt the Minds of the People, and to Overturn Our Happy Constitution, are Explained, and Laid Open to Public View … (London: Printed for J. Robinson, at the Golden-Lyon in Ludgate-Street, [1745]); ESTC: T72093 (which dates this pamphlet to 1745); O copy available on GB here. Ornaments: [1] (H03, F02), [30] (T07).